Thirteen


(2008 - 2009)
“In the second series, 13, the relationship between the camera and the objects is significantly changed. The directness and openness of the children become an unbridgeable distance. A sense of loss and departure shoots out like an arrow from colorful, seductive images. The scenes create asense of inaccessibility, and raise thoughts of an inherent, existential anxiety in the depths of the parenting experience. One photograph shows a group of children locked inside a greenhouse in the middle of a fallowfield. The greenhouse, in its botanical context, is the ideal growth environment, providing protection, perfect climate conditions, and optimal nourishment. These human “plants” are not protected – they are trapped, and cannot communicate. The protective cover becomes threatening, distancing. The subjects do not give themselves easily; they surround themselves, physically and mentally, with defense mechanisms. The camera is charged with a new role: it defines territories and marks the limits of intervention. The gaze is the ultimate mechanism of inaccessibility. Here is photography in one of its most frustrating instances – its inherent attempt to document the moment, the becoming of a thing in the past, underlines its impossibility. The significant moment is the moment of failure, where there’s nothing but the huge gap, created by the physical and mental presence of the camera, between the photographer and the object being photographed.”
Yair Barak






Thirteen


...In the second series, 13, the relationship between the camera and the objects is significantly changed. The directness and openness of the children become an unbridgeable distance. A sense of loss and departure shoots out like an arrow from colorful, seductive images. The scenes create a sense of inaccessibility, and raise thoughts of an inherent, existential anxiety in the depths of the parenting experience.

One photograph shows a group of children locked inside a greenhouse in the middle of a fallow field.  The greenhouse, in its botanical context, is the ideal growth environment, providing protection, perfect climate conditions, and optimal nourishment. These human “plants” are not protected – they are trapped, and cannot communicate. The protective cover becomes threatening, distancing. The subjects do not give themselves easily; they surround themselves, physically and mentally, with defense mechanisms. The camera is charged with a new role: it defines territories and marks the limits of intervention. The gaze is the ultimate mechanism of inaccessibility. Here is photography in one of its most frustrating instances – its inherent attempt to document the moment, the becoming of a thing in the past, underlines its impossibility. The significant moment is the moment of failure, where there’s nothing but the huge gap, created by the physical and mental presence of the camera, between the photographer and the object being photographed.

Yair Barak




© Angelika Sher
2022